


No More Than I Deserve

by tridecaphilia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s03e12 Lunar Ellipse, could be preslash if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tridecaphilia/pseuds/tridecaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone helped Stiles, and then there was Derek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Than I Deserve

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of the thought "Someone please help Stiles" and far too many gifsets and posts on Tumblr about Derek's leaving and return to Beacon Hills.

**1\. Danny**

It starts with one too many nights where he wakes up two hours after he lay down with his throat raw from smothered screams. One too many nights and he’s slower on the lacrosse field, clumsier, reflexes dulled. He misses shots, misses passes. Finstock yells and has him running suicides until he thinks he’ll actually die.

And it’s not Scott who waits in the locker room for him. It’s Danny. Danny who grins and offers tips on how to soothe his overworked muscles. Danny who drives him home because he can barely keep his eyes open. Danny who hands Stiles off to his father and who promises he’ll help Stiles catch up since there’s no way he’ll get his homework done.

The next day, when Stiles is still bleary-eyed but at least slept a few hours, it’s Danny who claims a spot in the corner of the library for him to sleep during lunch hour, and Danny who stays after school and lacrosse to help with his homework.

And over the next few weeks, it’s Danny who helps him. Danny is the one who stays over when a half-asleep Stiles asks him to, to keep the nightmares away. Danny soothes him back to sleep when he wakes up screaming, Danny listens to his stumbling explanations of what’s wrong, and by some miracle he doesn’t even question the secrets Stiles still doesn’t tell.

Danny is too good a person, and Stiles doesn’t deserve it. So he tries to stop relying on him. And Danny will stick around when Stiles can’t offer an explanation, when Stiles asks for more than he deserves—but Danny won’t stick around where he’s not wanted.

**2\. God**

It’s another dream, but this time when his father hurls the bottle at him everything freezes, and Stiles turns to find Morgan Freeman standing behind him.

“Let’s go for a walk,” the man says, and the scene dissolves into a brightly-lit path in the woods.

Freeman starts walking, and Stiles keeps up without trying. “Why is Morgan Freeman in my dream?” he wonders aloud.

Freeman smiles. “You mean you don’t know who I am, a smart young man like you?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“I’m God.”

Stiles looks at him and cracks up. It feels good to laugh—he hasn’t been light enough to laugh in a long time.

Freeman/God waits while he laughs, a smile on his own face. “You don’t believe me?”

“No offense, I mean, I know Freeman played God in Bruce Almighty,” Stiles shrugs, “but I’m pretty sure God, if he was real, wouldn’t actually look like that.”

“I like using this form,” Freeman smiles. “People recognize it. And I’ll admit, Freeman makes a pretty good me.”

He watches Stiles for a little. “You said ‘if God was real’. You don’t believe. But you pray anyway.”

Stiles frowns. When did he—

He remembers before going to bed that night, mumbling, _Please, someone, just let me not have nightmares tonight._

Oh.

“That counts as a prayer?” He narrows his eyes, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “No offense, dude, but I think you need to raise your standards a little.”

“My standards are fine,” God says. “You need me, and you asked.”

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who asks.”

“And you’re not the only one who gets it. And you’ll probably forget when you wake up, same as most of them. But part of you will remember,” he taps Stiles’ chest, “that I’m watching over you.”

Stiles wakes up the next morning when his alarm clock goes off. He can’t remember the last time he was still asleep that late. He tries to remember his dream. Not a nightmare, he knows, but he can’t remember anything else.

**3\. Parents**

At first it’s just a flicker at the corner of his eye, an image just out of focus that he shrugs off as lack of sleep. And then it’s his mom’s fingers running through his hair like she did before she died, before he buzzed it all off so he didn’t have to face the fact she wasn’t there; and it’s his mother’s voice singing him to sleep. He sleeps better those nights, even better than the ones where God appears that he never remembers, but he still doesn’t think it’s real.

Until one day, his father is the one waking him up. Stiles recoils, thinking he’s still asleep, because his dad never hears the screams Stiles doesn’t make, never wakes him up from the nightmares Stiles doesn’t talk about, and in his dreams his dad hates him, blames him, hits him.

But this is reality, he realizes after his dad holds up his hands and he hears the clarity of his words and can smell his breath and knows there’s no alcohol there, it’s just his dad offering comfort, and he lets his dad hold him and talk to him until he falls asleep, and once more he sleeps peacefully.

His dad tells him later that his Claudia’s ghost led him into the room. And only then does Stiles believe what his senses have been telling him.

**4\. Lydia**

He and Lydia have this thing, right, this thing where they’re there for each other when no one else is, where they pull each other back from the brink when they need it. But the thing about this thing is that Stiles isn’t good at asking for help, and Lydia isn’t good at dealing with other people’s weaknesses, and neither of them really wants to admit how much this whole thing is affecting Stiles.

So it’s not until Stiles has another panic attack in the middle of the school—he failed a test because he still barely sleeps, and the thought of telling his dad combined with the exhaustion blurring the line between nightmare and reality all combined to push him over the edge—that Lydia does anything real. And what she does, Stiles won’t know about until later. Because what she does, when she’s brought Stiles back from his panic attack and taken him to the nurse’s office to sleep for a period, is she talks to a few key people, people in a position to locate one missing sourwolf. And then she talks to the teacher, the new chemistry teacher who’s a bit of a soft touch, and he says he needs a parent’s approval to schedule a makeup test, so she calls the sheriff and tells him what happened and what he needs to do. And then when she’s got all of that lined up, she goes right up to one Scott McCall and tells him a few things he didn’t want to hear.

**5\. Scott**

Scott’s not oblivious. He’s never been as dense as certain teachers would think. He’s just not really good at the kind of intelligence they test for in school. Scott’s always been a more emotional kind of guy, the kind who you wouldn’t want operating on you but the one you’d want to explain everything and comfort you and tell you how you went afterward.

And while Scott has made great strides in the arena of book smarts this year, Stiles needs the guy who can say the right thing, who approaches everything with the same optimism and confidence that things will work out.

The problem is, that guy went under the water just like Stiles did, and just like Stiles he brought something back. And Scott’s done better at keeping the darkness at bay in his own heart, but even Scott’s smile is a little dimmer now.

So it’s not until Lydia pulls him aside and verbally bitchslaps him that he figures it out, realizes that as much as it’s hurting him it’s hurting Stiles a lot worse, and figures out not just the simple fact that Stiles needs someone, but how to be that someone.

And then, it’s Scott beside Stiles when he wakes up. Scott who takes Stiles’ pain—not with his werewolf powers, because that doesn’t work on emotions, but with his bright smile and his willingness to listen. Scott who arranges to stay over with Stiles on the nights his father is working so that Stiles, when he screams himself awake, has a friendly face to wake up to. Scott who is there, and who unlike Danny—because Danny is nice, better than Stiles deserves, but Scott is _Scott_ and he knows when to listen to Stiles’ griping and objections and when to laugh and ignore them—stays even when Stiles starts pulling away.

And there’s a friendly goalie ready and waiting when Stiles just needs to vent, and a man with eyes as old as the stars in his dreams when he breaks down and prays, and a ghostly mother and solid father who are there when he’s at home, and a genius banshee when he’s reaching the brink, and a true Alpha with a smile as bright as the sun who won’t leave Stiles even if he asks.

And there’s still something missing, but this is more than Stiles deserves, and he doesn’t ask for more.

**And then there was Derek**

It’s been months since Derek left, since the Darach and the Alpha pack were dispatched, since Deucalion left town and the twins settled into a strained but amiable relationship with the pack and their significant others. Stiles is settling into a routine. He knows who to ask for help when; he’s set up in his mind a way to divide the burden of helping him so he doesn’t feel worse for asking too much of any one person.

But there’s still something missing.

Tonight is a rare kind of night. His dad wasn’t supposed to be at work, but he got called away, and it’s a full moon and it’s late so there’s no one else he really wants to call to take his place. Stiles doesn’t know that the people he relies on have all mutually agreed to help more than he asks, because they all know he asks less than he needs.

But tonight, when the scream first tears its way from his throat he’s alone in the house. When he wakes up, though, there’s someone in front of him, someone holding his wrists. That doesn’t help him calm down in the least, and he thrashes, landing on a kick on the person. A soft grunt and the sudden release of his hands is his response.

“Calm down,” the person says, and those two words are enough for Stiles to realize who it is. And his breath catches, and he’s headed toward a panic attack, because this isn’t real. He’s still asleep, he has to be; his subconscious has just come up with a new way to torture him.

“Stiles,” the man says, and he comes closer, and in the light from the window he can see that it looks like Derek, although something is wrong. The dream Derek puts a hand on Stiles’ shoulder and a choked sob escapes Stiles’ throat because this is too cruel, and that hand will turn into a fist soon.

Derek pulls his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You were screaming, and your dad left a while ago.”

“Left?” Stiles whispers. It’s the first time he realizes how much support he’s been given, because now he feels its absence far more strongly than he did before. He’s shaking, because this is a dream and now he’s seeing the nightmare emerge from the folds of hope.

He doesn’t notice Derek moving until his arms are around Stiles and Stiles can’t help flinching but Derek is—Derek is shushing him, making low comforting noises in the back of his throat and running his fingers through Stiles’ hair. And maybe this is real, because no one’s done that except his mom, and not even the darkness around his heart will betray the sanctity of his mother’s memory by associating this with a nightmare.

He closes his eyes, because he’s still so tired—but forces them open. “But you left,” he says.

“I needed to sort out some things,” Derek says. “Too many bad memories here, and it wasn’t safe for Cora to stay. But I’m back now, and I don’t plan to leave again.”

And he realizes what’s different about Derek. He doesn’t have the same weight on his shoulders anymore. Being away did something for him.

“Promise?” Stiles asks.

Derek nods; Stiles can hear the movement more than feel it, given that he’s currently at chest level with Derek and can’t see his face. “I promise. I’ll even be here when you wake up.”

Derek’s voice is a low rumble in his chest where Stiles’ face has ended up pressed against him, and he keeps talking, and slowly, unwillingly but too exhausted to fight it, Stiles falls asleep.

He expects Derek to be gone in the morning. He’s wrong—Derek promised. He won’t leave him again.

And when he realizes that, realizes that the promise made in the dead of night carries over to this morning, some part of him relaxes. Because maybe it _isn’t_ a dream. And maybe—maybe it’s more than he deserves, but maybe he can have it anyway.


End file.
